SSP Daily Digest: 5/13 (Afternoon Edition)

AZ-Sen: A little tension here between John McCain and retiring Rep. John Shadegg? Shadegg has endorsed McCain (along with the rest of Arizona’s GOP House delegation) but was publicly laughing along with the Morning Joe crew to John McCain’s new TV ad on border security (which marks a big ‘ol flip-flop for the one-time pro-immigration reform McCain).

NV-Sen: Everyone’s abuzz today about the new Mason-Dixon/LVRJ poll that has right-winger Sharron Angle moving into contention in the GOP primary, mostly as Sue Lowden’s expense. The numbers suggest that may have more to do with Angle’s higher profile after getting the Tea Party Express endorsement, rather than blowback from Lowden having laid an egg. We’ll have more on that poll once we have the general election numbers. Danny Tarkanian still seems to be in the thick of things, though; he’s touting an internal poll that has him tied with Lowden at 30-30, with Angle hanging back at 15. Tarkanian may also be able to blunt Angle’s surge a bit with a far-right endorsement of his own, from Minutemen co-founder Jim Gilchrist.

NY-Sen-B: Rep. Peter King took a pass on challenging Kirsten Gillibrand after much public pondering, but today he’s announcing that he’s backing Bruce Blakeman in the GOP primary among the various lower-tier candidates who did get in.

CA-Gov: Yesterday, Steve Poizner rooted around in his change jar and found an extra $2.5 million to go toward a final push in the GOP gubernatorial primary. Meg Whitman was unimpressed, raising the stakes with another $5 million (bringing her own campaign-long total to $64 million of her own money). “That’s not a ludicrous waste of money. Now this is a ludicrous waste of money,” she was overheard saying in an Australian accent.

CT-Gov: Stop the presses! Rudy Marconi is out of the Democratic field for the gubernatorial race. Since this is probably the first you’ve heard of him and you may be thinking he’s the guy who invented the radio, no, he’s the First Selectman of Ridgefield. He was the last minor Dem to fall, making it a two-man fight between Ned Lamont and Dan Malloy. (Marconi endorsed Lamont on the way out.) Both Lamont and Malloy picked up some labor endorsements too, although it seems like Malloy got the bigger score, in the form of the SEIU’s two largest locals in the state. Lamont got the Laborers.

MA-Gov: It looks like the RGA’s hard hit on indie Tim Cahill (echoes of their attacks on Chris Daggett in New Jersey) may have had the desired effects. A Rasmussen poll this week showed Cahill lagging into the teens, in the third place, with GOPer Charlie Baker moving up (unfortunately for them, it also seemed to suggest some Cahill votes moving to Patrick too, as he moved up even more than Baker and pushed into the 40s, but I suppose that’s part of the GOP’s plan to try and minimize Cahill and turn it into a traditional two-man race). It also blunted a social conservative uprising: a number of RNC national committee members had moved to stop the RGA from spending money on Charlie Baker because of his tolerant social views, but many of them withdrew that request shortly after seeing the polls indicating that the GOP attacks were actually working. UPDATE: National Journal has some additional background, and it seems like the back-down may have had more to do with some hard arm-twisting from Haley Barbour than a sudden epiphany on the part of the recalcitrant Iowans.

MN-Gov: Looks like Margaret Anderson Kelliher, despite her DFL endorsement, is far from having things locked down in the Democratic primary. The United Steelworkers endorsed one of her opponents who didn’t bother with the party process, ex-sen. Mark Dayton.

NV-Gov: One small tidbit from yesterday’s poll by Dem pollster Fairbank Maslin, that raised a lot of eyebrows over its NV-Sen numbers, escaped our attention. They also found Rory Reid within striking distance of likely GOP nominee Brian Sandoval, 46-41. (No word on a Reid/Gibbons result.)

NC-07: Now here’s one of the last places I’d expected to see an intramural cat-fud fight. After attracting some good notices from the NRCC (including addition to the “On the Radar” tier) based on respectable fundraising and Iraq vet credentials, Ilario Pantano got over the 50% mark in the GOP primary. But now his two vanquished rivals, 2008 nominee Will Breazeale and Randy Crow, are uniting to fight against Pantano in the general. This doesn’t sound like a typical lame case of sour grapes: Breazeale, a vet himself, says he has a “moral obligation” to fight Pantano over his actions in Iraq. It turns out Pantano was charged with murder after shooting two Iraqis in his custody, although charges were eventually dropped. Pantano faces Dem Rep. Mike McIntyre, who’s had little trouble holding this R+5 seat so far.

NY-01: With three rich guys duking it out in the GOP primary, Newt Gingrich, for some reason, waded into the fray to endorse the seemingly richest of the bunch: Randy Altschuler.

WI-07: One more prominent local Dem decided against competing in the primary to replace retiring Rep. David Obey, leaving state Sen. Julie Lassa pretty much the consensus pick. Former state Sen. Kevin Shibilski said he liked the idea of getting in, but recognized the importance of avoiding a contested primary.

West Virginia: Highly motivated voters in both parties this year? Guess again, if West Virginia’s primary is any indication. Turnout in the Mountain State was actually a record low, with only 166,000 votes cast, or 14% of registered voters.

Florida: Mason-Dixon’s Senate and Governor poll included a whole bunch of downballot races too, offering a mixed bag for Dems. Maybe the most noteworthy finding: Dem ex-Tallahassee mayor Scott Maddox is leading the Ag Commissioner race, 31-30. That’s surprising, since the GOP fielded a top-tier opponent (in fact, several tiers above what this kind of race usually attracts) in the former of retiring Rep. Adam Putnam. In the CFO race, GOP state Senate president Jeff Atwater leads Dem ex-state Rep. Loranne Ausley, 33-26. For the AG race, they don’t poll the general but look at both primaries (where undecideds rule the day). On the Dem side, state Sen. Dan Gelber (who had run for Senate for a while) leads state Sen. Dave Aronberg (who really should be running in FL-16 instead) 15-12, while on the GOP side, Lt. Gov. Jeff Kottkamp leads Pam Bondi 13-10.

Demographics: While we’re talking about Florida, Josh Goodman has some interesting number-crunching about where the growth in Florida is, and what that may mean for redistricting. The fastest-growing counties in the state seem to be the dark-red exurbs around Jacksonville (like Clay County), but that’s counterbalanced somewhat by the fast growth in the Orlando area, where the growth isn’t quite as fast but where there’s also a Democratic trend in the electorate.

47 thoughts on “SSP Daily Digest: 5/13 (Afternoon Edition)”

  1. That poll is the best news for Gov. Patrick we’ve seen in a long time. After three years of upside-down numbers, his image is improving at the right time, and he got a nice bump from how he handled a major break in a water main in the Boston suburbs last week.

    Very, very smart move by the RGA to go after Cahill early and often. Patrick is probably capped at about 45-48% (at least as he stands now) and Baker’s only path to victory is to to keep Cahill in the single digits. It doesn’t matter if the Cahill supporters initially drift into the Patrick column, since Baker is the least known of the three and has both the time and the money to win them over to his side.  

  2. Daniel Mongiardo (D) 39 (47)

    Jack Conway (D) 36 (31)

    Rand Paul (R) 45 (40)

    Trey Grayson (D) 35 (28)

    Trey Grayson (R) 42

    Daniel Mongiardo (D) 36

    Rand Paul (R) 43

    Daniel Mongiardo (D) 38

    Trey Grayson (R) 43

    Jack Conway (D) 35

    Rand Paul (R) 42

    Jack Conway (D) 39

    http://www.dailykos.com/storyo

    Momemtum is with Conway thank goodness. Hopefully he pulls it out.

  3. I’m wondering which one would prove to be easier for Reid to vanquish in the general election. Lowden has proved herself to be a really bad politician in the last few weeks, but she does have the ability to self fund her own campaign and has raised decent money. Angle is truly insane and would be easy to define early as an extremist in the minds of voters. Unlike Lowden, she doesn’t have the ability to self fund and hasn’t raised much money.

    I feel better about this race than I have in months.  

  4. I saw a reference to a Mason-Dixon IA-Gov poll on a Republican blog, but it didn’t include a link, and I couldn’t find it on the Mason-Dixon site. Anyone see this?

  5. Your link to the NC-07 story goes to Jon Ralston’s story about Nevada, same one for the NV-Gov link.  I think the link you were looking for was this Politico story.  And wow, you got a real trio of GOP “winners” there.  Crow seems to think he’s the second coming of Christ and is also a 9/11 conspiracy theorist.  Breazeale seems to have run as both a Democrat and Republican, and Pantano does have those former murder charges.  This is one of the only news accounts I could find of what happened.

    Pantano was charged with a capital crime for slaying two Iraqis during a raid in 2004 and hanging a sign over their bodies with a Marine slogan, “No better friend, no worse enemy.” Ultimately cleared of the charges, Pantano went on to write a book about the experience. He hopes the notoriety will help him win the Republican nomination.

    ….

    Pantano was a Marine platoon leader six years ago when he led his men on a raid of a suspected insurgent compound in Mahmudiyah, Iraq. As his Marines approached, two Iraqi men left in a car.

    Pantano stopped the car while some of his men raided the compound and uncovered weapons and propaganda, according to Associated Press accounts of the case. The two men in the car began speaking Arabic. Pantano told them to stop when they made a menacing move toward him. Pantano fired his M-16, emptying two magazines and killing both of them. Pantano then hung the sign over their bodies.

    The shootings led to charges of premeditated murder and brought national attention on Pantano, one of the first service members charged with a capital crime in the Iraq War. After the military equivalent of a grand jury hearing, a Marine general decided in 2005 not to bring Pantano to trial.

    ….

    Born to an Italian immigrant father and raised in New York’s Hell’s Kitchen, Pantano earned a scholarship to one of New York’s most prestigious private schools.

    Instead of going straight to college, he joined the Marine Corps at 17 because he wanted to serve his country. After fighting in the Gulf War of the early 1990s, he returned to New York, got an economics degree from New York University and went to work at Goldman Sachs on Wall Street. In 1998, disgusted by what he considered Wall Street greed, he left to work for a media company and then started his own business.

    Pantano’s life changed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

    “I knew instantly we were at war. I had a single place to be. It was about getting back to the fight,” Pantano said.

    He tried to re-enlist that day. He went back in as an infantry officer and eventually deployed to Iraq. When one of his men mentioned the 2004 shooting to higher ups, Pantano came under investigation.

    Prosecutors alleged Pantano intended to make an example of the men by shooting them 60 times and hanging a sign over their bodies. Marines who served with Pantano told a different story. They called him a good Marine who was friendly with Iraqis.

    Pantano does not deny hanging the sign or shooting the men repeatedly. He says he acted in self-defense.

    “I’m the guy that has stepped up and fought. I’ve killed terrorists. I’ve been at the tip of the spear,” he said.

    So there you have it.  In a war zone, someone makes a “menacing move” towards you, yeah, you probably shoot at them.  But shooting them 60 times and hanging that sign make it seem a bit… excessive.  But the story also notes the people in his unit stand by him.

    So now that Breazeale and Crow say they’re still going to fight Pantano because of what he did in Iraq, I dunno.  Could that actually help Pantano by highlighting his military experience?

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